


Preparing for the Shift

by Sparky_Lurkdragon



Category: AI Dungeon 2 (Video Game), Ironsworn (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Abduction, Animal Transformation, Body Horror, Child peril, Dead Parent in Backstory, Dragons, Emotional Whump, Gen, Ghosts, Imprisonment, Nudity, Were-Creatures, Whumptober 2020, cannibalism mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26789164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparky_Lurkdragon/pseuds/Sparky_Lurkdragon
Summary: Kidnapped by trolls on the day of her monthly transformation, the werewyvern Odwena must think quickly if she's going to save her fellow abductees.
Kudos: 2
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Preparing for the Shift

**Author's Note:**

> More Whumptober! This is for Day 2 and uses the prompts "Pick Who Dies", "Collars", and "Kidnapped".
> 
> This is a revised version of the first half of [Chapter 13](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290594/chapters/65334709) of _[The Adventures of Odwena of Summersong](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26290594/chapters/64008478)_ , which is an intermittent AI Dungeon 2 adventure that uses the Ironsworn tabletop system to wrangle the AI's weirder tangents a little. This is the kind of polish I'd like to someday give the whole adventure once it's all written down. If the AID2 version represents the gleeful just-get-it-down zeroth draft, this represents the sketch of a third draft. I consider the changes substantial enough to be Whumptober legal.

Odwena landed with a thump in the bottom of the pit. She groaned and opened her eyes, looking up at the trolls who had shoved her in. They held a short but animated conversation with each other in their own language as she closed her eyes again, listening as their chatter petered out and most of them walked away. Someone determined could probably climb out of the earthen pit, and so she guessed the trolls would have left a guard or two at the top.

She mustered her energy and sat slowly up, rubbing her head. All this because they thought the iron of her Werewyvern's Collar was pretty. Odwena groaned again and clenched her teeth. She knew they had no idea what it actually _meant_. Not even rogue trolls looking for a pretty trinket would have knowingly attempted to hold a werewyvern prisoner on the day of the New Moon.

A small voice saying "Hello?" made her jerk her head up. Her heart sank and her suspicions mounted as she saw two children, a human girl and a little dragon boy, in the pit with her. The human looked perhaps ten or so, and while Odwena didn't know that much about how dragon children developed, he was evidently too young to fly. Both were filthy and frightened, huddling together with the human holding the dragon with one hand and clutching a battered little book in the other.

Odwena lowered her hand to her lap and tried to make her expression look nonthreatening. "Hello," she said.

The tone of her voice seemed to soothe the children somewhat. The dragon perked his floppy ears up as much as they would go and asked, "What's your name?"

"Odwena."

He smiled. "Nice to meet you, Odwena."

Still keeping her tone gentle, Odwena asked, "And what are your names?"

"I'm Snowfrolic," said the dragon.

"My name's Avela," said the human.

"Well, now. It's nice to meet the both of you, too." Odwena glanced up at the top of the pit. She would have to navigate this conversation delicately. Looking back at the children, she asked, "What do you have there, Avela?"

Avela let go of Snowfrolic to hold her book in both hands. "It's a story. It's about a hero. He fights wyverns, and other creatures. And he saves his homeland."

Odwena hid a mental flinch at the mention of wyverns. "Do you like that story?"

Avela nodded. "My dad gave it to me."

Snowfrolic glanced at her, then pricked his ears up again. "I like reading, too," he said, a bit too abruptly. Odwena suspected he was trying to change the subject. She suppressed a sigh.

"And where is your father?"

The children's expressions fell. Avela leaned up against Snowfrolic, who nudged her chin with his snout and answered for her. "He died when we were both really little. Her momma's back at Saren's Glory, though."

"Saren's Glory?"

"Our village. Dragons and humans live together there."

Odwena let a small smile show. "That's different from the Ragged Coast, where I'm from. Dragons mostly just tolerate us humans there."

There was a pause, the children looking curiously at Odwena. The timeframe wasn't right for Avela's father, then, but she still had another suspicion, and she kept her tone gentle as she asked Snowfrolic, "Is your mother back there, too?"

He frowned, his barbels fanning forward. "I'm not sure where Momma is."

Odwena took a slow breath and braced herself. "What's her name?"

"Uhhhh... oh! It's Castinspire."

Odwena nodded, trying to keep the sadness out of her expression. Hearing that, she lost the last of her conflicted feelings about what was doomed to happen to the trolls when night fell. These trolls were murderers as well as kidnappers. For killing Castinspire, they deserved to be razed to the ground by a berserk werewyvern.

On the other hand, that berserk werewyvern would see a human and dragon child as easy prey, too. Odwena tightened her jaw, but as she thought that, something tweaked at the back of her mind. She looked to her left and saw a purple, shimmering, translucent figure, which nodded at her. She was completely unsurprised. Odwena looked again at the children, fairly certain they wouldn't be able to see Kaivan's spirit, then stood.

"I have to talk to someone," she said.

"Okay," said both children. Even if they could not see him, spirits lingering was not too uncommon, and at their age they probably knew at least one haunted person.

Odwena approached Kaivan, close enough to whisper to him. "I can guess why you're here."

Kaivan nodded again. "The New Moon is tonight."

"Yes. Eating these trolls, fine: it looks like they're the ones who murdered Snowfrolic's mother, never mind abducting all of us. But I don't want to hurt the children."

Kaivan looked levelly at her. "You have the bell."

Odwena channelled the futile urge to shake him into reaching behind her neck to brush the star-iron bell that hung from her collar. "I still don't know how to use it, no thanks to you!"

Kaivan glanced at the sky, not quite rolling his eyes. "Fine. Here's another hint. Right before you transform, if you focus on one thing, and one thing only, the sound of the bell will let the wyvern remember it."

Odwena startled. Ghostly Kaivan was telling her something straightforwardly and bringing easy clarity? She slowly let her hand drop and nodded. "Thank you."

Kaivan raised one translucent purple finger. "Ah-ah-ah, think about that carefully. _One_ thing, Odwena. There are _two_ children here."

Even as her blood ran cold, Odwena couldn't help the thought that this was more like Kaivan. "I have to choose between them?!"

"Yes."

She was at a loss for words for a moment, then on the brink of asking what he would do. But she stopped herself. He demanifested when she said nothing, and she turned away, folding her arms. It left her looking at the children again.

Snowfrolic squirmed and lifted a forefoot. "Was that a spirit?"

Odwena nodded. "And he told me something very important."

"What was it?"

How to explain something so stark? If what Kaivan had said was true, there was no saving both of them. The moment the transformation finished and she saw them, her wyvern's mind would only see a prey item in whoever the bell did not let her remember. That she would feel terrible about it in the morning wouldn't bring whoever was devoured back to life. Odwena found herself staring at the both of them for nearly half a minute, until something clicked about her own stray thoughts, showing her a potential way out of having to make such a wretched decision.

She pointed at the side of the pit. "We're going to dig."

Avela tilted her head. "But we can't get out by digging."

"That's true." Odwena lifted a hand to her collar. "Do you two know what this means?"

The children shook their heads.

"It means that I'm a werewyvern. And tonight is the New Moon."

Snowfrolic startled up onto his hind legs, coiling around Avela as she threw her arms around him. The children stared, speechless and terrified, up at Odwena. She nodded grimly. There was no point in wrapping it up like a box of trinkets.

"If I see you as a wyvern, children, I will eat you. I won't be able to help myself." She bent forward, hands on her knees, to put herself closer to their level. "But here's the thing. If you dig, and you do it right, then I won't be able to see you. I won't even know you're there. Do you understand?"

"I'm scared," said Avela.

Snowfrolic swallowed hard. "I am, too, but... but I will be brave. I understand."

Avela slowly let him go as he unwound himself from her. "...I'll be brave, too."

Odwena let her shoulders relax a little. It was the best she could do. "I'll keep watch. Dig straight forward until you can both turn and dig a small tunnel that you can shelter in. Go on."

All through the day, the children dug with no complaints. Odwena stood guard over them, warning them whenever the trolls took a minute to look down at them. As the sky above her was turning red with the evening, Odwena turned to the tunnel. The children were scratching away at the soil, out of sight.

"Avela? Snowfrolic?"

The two of them came to the mouth of their little tunnel. Odwena forced a smile.

"You've done very well. Now. It's almost nighttime. Both of you need to go into your tunnel and stay very still and very quiet. Don't come out until I call you by name, no matter what else you hear. Understand?"

Two scared little nodding heads answered her before they vanished.

Odwena took a deep breath and walked to the other side of the prison pit, taking everything off but her Werewyevern's Collar. It was magic and would grow with the transformation; the rest of her clothes would not, and as they were good leather and cloth she didn't want to ruin them if she could avoid it. She stepped, nearly naked, into the centre of the pit, waiting for evening to fade away into night, thinking as hard as she could about both Avela and Snowfrolic's faces.

When darkness fell, lit only by the stars, her transformation began.

Blackish-blue scales erupted across her body, some of them in the form of a ridge of soft spikes that replaced her hair and ran the length of her spine as it extended into a tail. Her arms, her neck, her legs grew longer, more muscular. Her fingers lengthened into struts for her wings, her feet becoming paws with great cruel claws on them. Her face became a snout with pointed teeth as her tongue forked and a pair of horns sprouted from her head. Her eyes were the same green as her human form, but behind them there was only the rage and hunger of the Great Wyvern's spirit.

Odwena squatted down, hearing the bell on her collar chime with the motion. The only concept that made it into her awareness was the thought that _something important to be protected_ was in the pit. She rocked her weight to ensure her traction, then burst out of the prison pit, hovering as she looked down at the shocked troll guards.

At her prey.


End file.
